Dan Sabbagh is right to point out (Judges deserve the red card for pressurising news websites, 23 July) that the internet poses a challenge to our contempt of court law, but it is worth remembering that when judges try to prevent jurors from Googling defendants' histories they are not just throwing their judicial weight around. Contempt law is meant to help ensure that people can have fair trials, and it was defence lawyers and civil libertarians who demanded it, not judges. Down the years many wrongly accused people have had cause to be grateful for the protection it gives.

It is also too easy to say that we can safely abandon our legal protections because American courts survive without them; their judicial system is different in hundreds of ways and piecemeal copying would bring hazards of its own. Our law may seem an anachronism but we should be careful: writing it off may mean condemning innocent people to jail.Brian CathcartKingston University